For the sake of profitability, one of the largest American bitcoin miners launches into kaspa

Marathon Digital said the company will double its Kaspa mining capacity in the third quarter of 2024.

Bitcoin is no longer Marathon’s only horizon. To diversify and try to find new profitability trajectories with its computing capabilities, the American company Marathon Digital announced in a press release published on June 26 that it has now been mining the “kaspa” cryptocurrency since September 2023. Marathon said it had mined 93 million “KAS”, currently valued at around 15 million euros.

For the moment, this is still a very minor part of Marathon Digital’s revenues. For comparison, during the 1st quarter the company produced 2,811 bitcoins (+28% over one year), according to its latest financial results. Which represents 3.1% of the rewards awarded to all Bitcoin blockchain miners worldwide over the period, again according to Marathon Digital. These 2,811 bitcoins would be worth around $170 million at the current price.

Kaspa is the twenty-fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to Coinmarketcap, and the fifth largest digital asset (by capitalization) running on the so-called “proof of work” system. It has a market capitalization of 3.9 billion euros with a daily transaction volume of approximately 150 million euros as of June 27, 2024. The circulating supply is approximately 24 billion KAS and will be capped at 28.7 billion.

As with bitcoin, kaspa is based on the concept of proof of work, the value of which is determined by power, energy and calculation in order to validate blocks of transactions. The choice for Marathon to mine this cryptocurrency is singular, while many have fallen back on proof of stake, via the consensus of validations to determine the value as for the Ethereum blockchain for example.

“By leveraging kaspa, we are able to create a diversified revenue stream from bitcoin and directly linked to our core digital asset computing skills,” said Adam Swick, Chief Growth Officer of Marathon.

+605% over one year

The company has declared that it will double its mining capacities in the third quarter of 2024. Its machines will increase from 30 to 60 petahash, (taking into account the difficulties of mining) and to further benefit from the growth dynamics of kaspa. The cryptocurrency far exceeds bitcoin in terms of performance over one year: +605% increase for the kaspa… compared to 99% increase for the queen of cryptocurrencies.

Marathon Digital is one of the largest bitcoin miners in the world. The company, listed on the Nasdaq, is currently worth nearly $5.5 billion on the stock market.